Les Dieux ont soif. English

by Anatole France

  VI

  Ten o'clock in the forenoon. Not a breath of wind. It was the hottestJuly ever known. In the narrow Rue de Jerusalem a hundred or so citizensof the Section were waiting in queue at the baker's door, under the eyeof four National Guards who stood at ease smoking their pipes.

  The National Convention had decreed the _maximum_,--and instantly cornand flour had disappeared. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, theParisians had to rise before daybreak if they wished to eat. The crowdwas lined up, men, women and children tightly packed together, under asky of molten lead. The heat beat down on the rotting foulness of thekennels and exaggerated the stench of unwashed, sweating humanity. Allwere pushing, abusing their neighbours, exchanging looks fraught withevery sort of emotion one human being can feel for another,--dislike,disgust, interest, attraction, indifference. Painful experience hadtaught them there was not bread enough for everybody; so the late comerswere always trying to push forward, while those who lost groundcomplained bitterly and indignantly and vainly claimed their rights.Women shoved and elbowed savagely to keep their place or squeeze into abetter. When the press grew too intolerable, cries rose of "Stop pushingthere!" while each and all protested they could not help it--it wassomeone else pushing them.

  To obviate these daily scenes of disorder, the officials appointed bythe Section had conceived the notion of fastening a rope to theshop-door which each applicant held in his proper order; but hands atsuch close quarters _would_ come in contact on the rope and a strugglewould result. Whoever lost hold could never recover it, while thedisappointed and the mischievously inclined sometimes cut the cord. Inthe end the plan had to be abandoned.

  On this occasion there was the usual suffocation and confusion. Whilesome swore they were dying, others indulged in jokes or loose remarks;all abused the aristocrats and federalists, authors of all the misery.When a dog ran by, wags hailed the beast as Pitt. More than once a loudslap showed that some _citoyenne_ in the line had resented with avigorous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while, pressed closeagainst her neighbour, a young servant girl, with eyes half shut andmouth half open, stood sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, orgesture, or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour of thecoarse-minded populace, a knot of young libertines would strike up the_Ca-ira_ in chorus, regardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highlyindignant to see a dirty meaning attached to a refrain expressive of theRepublican faith in a future of justice and happiness.

  His ladder under his arm, a billsticker appeared to post up on a blankwall facing the baker's a proclamation by the Commune apportioning therations of butcher's-meat. Passers-by halted to read the notice, stillsticky with paste. A cabbage vendor going by, basket on back, begancalling out in her loud cracked voice:

  "They'm all gone, the purty oxen! best rake up the guts!"

  Suddenly such an appalling stench of putrefaction rose from a sewer nearby that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill andhanded over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, whocarried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held their noses, andfell to growling and grumbling, exchanging conjectures each more ghastlyand alarming than the last. What was it? a dead animal buriedthereabouts, a dead fish, perhaps, put in for mischief's sake, or morelikely a victim of the September massacres, some noble or priest, leftto rot in a cellar.

  "They buried them in cellars, eh?"

  "They got rid of 'em anywhere and anyhow."

  "It will be one of the Chatelet prisoners. On the 2nd I saw threehundred in a heap on the Port au Change."

  The Parisians dreaded the vengeance of these aristocrats who were liketo poison them with their dead bodies.

  Evariste Gamelin joined the line; he was resolved to spare his oldmother the fatigues of the long wait. His neighbour, the _citoyen_Brotteaux, went with him, calm and smiling, his Lucretius in the baggypocket of his plum-coloured coat.

  The good old fellow enjoyed the scene, calling it a bit of low lifeworthy the brush of a modern Teniers.

  "These street-porters and goodwives," he declared, "are more amusingthan the Greeks and Romans our painters are so fond of nowadays. For mypart, I have always admired the Flemish style."

  One fact he was too sensible and tactful to mention--that he hadhimself owned a gallery of Dutch masters rivalled only by Monsieur deChoiseul's in the number and excellence of the examples.

  "Nothing is beautiful save the Antique," returned the painter, "and whatis inspired by it. Still, I grant you these low-life scenes by Teniers,Jan Steen or Ostade are better stuff than the frills and furbelows ofWatteau, Boucher, or Van Loo; humanity is shown in an ugly light, but itis not degraded as it is by a Baudouin or a Fragonard."

  A hawker went by bawling:

  "_Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal!_... list of the condemned!"

  "One Revolutionary Tribunal is not enough," said Gamelin, "there shouldbe one in every town ... in every town, do I say?--nay, in everyvillage, in every hamlet. Fathers of families, citizens, one and all,should constitute themselves judges. At a time when the enemy's cannonis at her gates and the assassin's dagger at her throat, the Nation musthold mercy to be parricide. What! Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux ininsurrection, Corsica in revolt, La Vendee on fire, Mayence andValenciennes in the hands of the Coalition, treason in the country, townand camp, treason sitting on the very benches of the NationalConvention, treason assisting, map in hand, at the council board of ourCommanders in the field!... The fatherland is in danger--and theguillotine must save her!"

  "I have no objection on principle to make to the guillotine," repliedBrotteaux. "Nature, my only mistress and my only instructress, certainlyoffers me no suggestion to the effect that a man's life is of any value;on the contrary, she teaches in all kinds of ways that it is of none.The sole end and object of living beings seems to be to serve as foodfor other beings destined to the same end. Murder is of natural right;therefore, the penalty of death is lawful, on condition it is exercisedfrom no motives either of virtue or of justice, but by necessity or togain some profit thereby. However, I must have perverse instincts, for Isicken to see blood flow, and this defect of character all my philosophyhas failed so far to correct."

  "Republicans," answered Evariste, "are humane and full of feeling. It isonly despots hold the death penalty to be a necessary attribute ofauthority. The sovereign people will do away with it one day.Robespierre fought against it, and all good patriots were with him; thelaw abolishing it cannot be too soon promulgated. But it will not haveto be applied till the last foe of the Republic has perished beneath thesword of law and order."

  Gamelin and Brotteaux had by this time a number of late comers behindthem and amongst these several women of the Section, including astalwart, handsome _tricoteuse_, in head-kerchief and sabots, wearing asword in a shoulder belt, a pretty girl with a mop of golden hair and avery tumbled neckerchief, and a young mother, pale and thin, giving thebreast to a sickly infant.

  The child, which could get no milk, was screaming, but its voice wasweak and stifled by its sobs. Pitifully small, with a pallid, unhealthyskin and inflamed eyes, the mother gazed at it with mingled anxiety andgrief.

  "He is very young," observed Gamelin, turning to look at the unhappyinfant groaning just at his back, half stifled amid the crowd of newarrivals.

  "He is six months, poor love!... His father is with the army; he is oneof the men who drove back the Austrians at Conde. His name is Dumonteil(Michel), a draper's assistant by trade. He enlisted at a booth they hadestablished in front of the Hotel de Ville. Poor lad, he was all fordefending his country and seeing the world.... He writes telling me tobe patient. But pray, how am I to feed Paul (he's called Paul, you know)when I can't feed myself?"

  "Oh, dear!" exclaimed the pretty girl with the flaxen hair, "we've gotanother hour before us yet, and to-night we shall have to repeat thesame ceremony over again at the grocer's. You risk your life to getthree eggs and a quarter of a pound of butter."

  "Butter!" sighed the _c
itoyenne_ Dumonteil, "why, it's three monthssince I've seen a scrap!"

  And a chorus of female voices rose, bewailing the scarcity and dearnessof provisions, cursing the _emigres_ and devoting to the guillotine theCommissaries of Sections who were ready to give good-for-nothing minxes,in return for unmentionable services, fat hens and four-pound loaves.Alarming stories passed round of cattle drowned in the Seine, sacks offlour emptied in the sewers, loaves of bread thrown into thelatrines.... It was all those Royalists, and Rolandists, and Brissotins,who were starving the people, bent on exterminating every living thingin Paris!

  All of a sudden the pretty, fair-haired girl with the rumpledneckerchief broke into shrieks as if her petticoats were afire. She wasshaking these violently and turning out her pockets, vociferating thatsomebody had stolen her purse.

  At news of the petty theft, a flood of indignation swept over this crowdof poor folks, the same who had sacked the mansions of the FaubourgSaint-Germain and invaded the Tuileries without appropriating thesmallest thing, artisans and housewives, who would have burned down thePalace of Versailles with a light heart, but would have thought it adire disgrace if they had stolen the value of a pin. The young rakesgreeted the pretty girl's loss with some ribald jokes, that wereimmediately drowned under a burst of public indignation. There was sometalk of instant execution--hanging the thief to the nearest lamp-post,and an investigation was begun, where everyone spoke at once and nobodywould listen to a word of reason. The tall _tricoteuse_, pointing herfinger at an old man, strongly suspected of being an unfrocked monk,swore it was the "Capuchin" yonder who was the cut-purse. The crowdbelieved her without further evidence and raised a shout of "Death!death!"

  The old man so unexpectedly exposed to the public vengeance was standingvery quietly and soberly just in front of the _citoyen_ Brotteaux. Hehad all the look, there was no denying it, of a _ci-devant_ cleric. Hisaspect was venerable, though the face was changed and drawn by theterrors the poor man had suffered from the violence of the crowd and therecollection of the September days that were still vivid in hisimagination. The fear depicted on his features stirred the suspicion ofthe populace, which is always ready to believe that only the guiltydread its judgments, as if the haste and recklessness with which itpronounces them were not enough to terrify even the most innocent.

  Brotteaux had made it a standing rule never to go against the popularfeeling of the moment, above all when it was manifestly illogical andcruel, "because in that case," he would say, "the voice of the peoplewas the voice of God." But Brotteaux proved himself untrue to hisprinciples; he asseverated that the old man, whether he was a Capuchinor not, could not have robbed the _citoyenne_, having never gone nearher for one moment.

  The crowd drew its own conclusion,--the individual who spoke up for thethief was of course his accomplice, and stern measures were proposed todeal with the two malefactors, and when Gamelin offered to guaranteeBrotteaux' honesty, the wisest heads suggested sending _him_ along withthe two others to the Sectional headquarters.

  But the pretty girl gave a cry of delight; she had found her purseagain. The statement was received with a storm of hisses, and she wasthreatened with a public whipping,--like a Nun.

  "Sir," said the ex-monk, addressing Brotteaux, "I thank you for havingspoken in my defence. My name is of no concern, but I had better tellyou what it is; I am called Louis de Longuemare. I am in truth aRegular; but not a Capuchin, as those women would have it. There is thewidest difference; I am a monk of the Order of the Barnabites, which hasgiven Doctors and Saints without number to the Church. It is only ahalf-truth to refer its origin to St. Charles Borromeo; we must accountas the true founder the Apostle St. Paul, whose cipher it bears on itsarms. I have been compelled to quit my cloister, now headquarters of theSection du Pont-Neuf, and adopt a secular habit.

  "Nay, Father," said Brotteaux, scrutinizing Monsieur de Longuemare'sfrock, "your dress is token enough that you have not forsworn yourprofession; to look at it, one might think you had reformed your Orderrather than forsaken it. It is your good heart makes you expose yourselfin these austere habiliments to the insults of a godless populace."

  "Yet I cannot very well," replied the ex-monk, "wear a blue coat, like aroisterer at a dance!"

  "What I mention, Father, about your dress is by way of paying homage toyour character and putting you on your guard against the risks you run."

  "On the contrary, sir, it would be much better to inspirit me to confessmy faith. For indeed, I am only too prone to fear danger. I haveabandoned my habit, sir, which is a sort of apostasy; I would fain nothave deserted, had it been possible, the House where God granted me forso many years the grace of a peaceable and retired life. I got leave tostay there, and I still continued to occupy my cell, while they turnedthe church and cloister into a sort of petty _hotel de ville_ theycalled the Section. I saw, sir, I saw them hack away the emblems of theHoly Verity; I saw the name of the Apostle Paul replaced by a convictedfelon's cap. Sometimes I was actually present at the confabulations ofthe Section, where I heard amazing errors propounded. At last I quittedthis place of profanation and went to live on the pension of a hundredpistoles allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood empty, thehorses having been requisitioned for the service of the armies. There Ising Mass for a few of the faithful, who come to the office to bearwitness to the eternity of the Church of Jesus Christ."

  "For my part, Father," replied the other, "if you care to know my name,I am called Brotteaux, and I was a publican in former days."

  "Sir," returned the Pere Longuemare, "I was aware by St. Matthew'sexample that one may look for good counsel from a publican."

  "Father, you are too obliging."

  "_Citoyen_ Brotteaux," remarked Gamelin, "pray admire the virtues of thepeople, more hungry for justice than for bread; consider how everyonehere is ready to lose his place to chastise the thief. These men andwomen, victims of such poverty and privation, are of so stern a probitythey cannot tolerate a dishonest act."

  "It must indeed be owned," replied Brotteaux, "that in their heartydesire to hang the pilferer, these folks were like to do a mischief tothis good cleric, to his champion and to his champion's champion. Theiravarice itself and their selfish eagerness to safeguard their ownwelfare were motives enough; the thief in attacking one of themthreatened all; self-preservation urged them to punish him.... At thesame time, it is like enough the most part of these workmen andgoodwives are honest and keep their hands off other folk's goods. Fromthe cradle these sentiments have been instilled in them by their fatherand mother, who have whipped them well and soundly and inculcated thevirtues through their backside."

  Gamelin did not conceal the fact from his old neighbour that he deemedsuch language unworthy of a philosopher.

  "Virtue," said he, "is natural to mankind; God has planted the seed ofit in the heart of mortals."

  Old Brotteaux was a sceptic and found in his atheism an abundant sourceof self-satisfaction.

  "I see this much, _citoyen_ Gamelin, that, while a Revolutionary forwhat is of this world, you are, where Heaven is concerned, of aconservative, or even a reactionary temper. Robespierre and Marat arethe same to you. For me, I find it strange that Frenchmen, who will notput up with a mortal king any longer, insist on retaining an immortaltyrant, far more despotic and ferocious. For what is the Bastille, oreven the _Chambre Ardente_[1] beside Hellfire? Humanity models its godson its tyrants, and you, who reject the original, preserve the copy!"

  "Oh! _citoyen!_" protested Gamelin, "are you not ashamed to hold suchlanguage? how can you confound the dark divinities born of ignorance andfear with the Author of Nature? Belief in a benevolent God is necessaryfor morality. The Supreme Being is the source of all the virtues and aman cannot be a Republican if he does not believe in God. Robespierreknew this, who, as we all remember, had the bust of the philosopherHelvetius removed from the Hall of the Jacobins, because he had taughtFrenchmen the lessons of slavery by preaching atheism.... I hope, atleast, _citoyen_ Brotteaux, that,
as soon as the Republic hasestablished the worship of Reason, you will not refuse your adhesion toso wise a religion!"

  "I love reason, but I am no fanatic in my love," was Brotteaux's answer."Reason is our guide and beacon-light; but when you have made a divinityof it, it will blind you and instigate you to crime,"--and he proceededto develop his thesis, standing both feet in the kennel, as he had oncebeen used to perorate, seated in one of Baron d'Holbach's giltarmchairs, which, as he was fond of saying, formed the basis of naturalphilosophy.

  "Jean Jacques Rousseau," he proceeded, "who was not without talents,particularly in music, was a scampish fellow who professed to derive hismorality from Nature while all the time he got it from the dogmas ofCalvin. Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the exampleof all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects orconceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this issimply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order tolive comfortably together. What we call morality is merely a desperateenterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures toreverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blindinterplay of hostile forces. She destroys herself, and the more I thinkof things, the more convinced I am that the universe is mad. Theologiansand philosophers, who make God the author of Nature and the architect ofthe universe, show Him to us as illogical and ill-conditioned. Theydeclare Him benevolent, because they are afraid of Him, but they areforced to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute a malignityto him seldom to be found even in mankind. And that is how they gethuman beings to adore Him. For our miserable race would never lavishworship on just and benevolent deities from which they would havenothing to fear; they would feel only a barren gratitude for theirbenefits. Without purgatory and hell, your good God would be a mightypoor creature."

  "Sir," said the Pere Longuemare, "do not talk of Nature; you do not knowwhat Nature is."

  "Egad, I know it as well as you do, Father."

  "You cannot know it, because you have not religion, and religion aloneteaches us what Nature is, wherein it is good, and how it has been madeevil. However, you must not expect me to answer you; God has vouchsafedme, to refute your errors, neither eloquence nor force of intellect. Ishould only be afraid, by my inadequate replies, of giving you occasionto blaspheme and further reasons for hardening your heart. I feel astrong desire to help you; yet the sole fruit of my importunate effortswould be to...."

  The discussion was cut short by a tremendous shout coming from the headof the column to warn the whole regiment of famished citizens that thebaker was opening his doors. The line began to push forward, but very,very slowly. A National Guard on duty admitted the purchasers one byone. The baker, his wife and boy presided over the sale, assisted by twoCivil Commissaries. These, wearing a tricoloured riband round the leftarm, saw that the customers belonged to the Section and were given theirproper share in proportion to the number of mouths to be filled.

  The _citoyen_ Brotteaux made the quest of pleasure the one and only aimof life, holding that the reason and the senses, the sole judges whengods there were none, were unable to conceive any other. Accordingly,finding the painter's remarks somewhat overfull of fanaticism, and theMonk's of simplicity, to please his taste, this wise man, bent onsquaring his behaviour with his views and relieving the tedium ofwaiting, drew from the bulging pocket of his plum-coloured coat hisLucretius, now as always his chiefest solace and faithful comforter. Thebinding of red morocco was chafed by hard wear, and the _citoyen_Brotteaux had judiciously erased the coat of arms that once embellishedit,--three islets or, which his father the financier had bought forgood money down. He opened the book at the passage where the poetphilosopher, who is for curing men of the futile and mischievous passionof love, surprises a woman in the arms of her serving-women in a statebound to offend all a lover's susceptibilities. The _citoyen_ Brotteauxread the lines, though not without casting a surreptitious glance at thegolden pate of the pretty girl in front of him and enjoying a sniff ofthe heady perfume of the little slut's hot skin. The poet Lucretius wasa wise man, but he had only one string to his bow; his discipleBrotteaux had several.

  So he read on, taking two steps forward every quarter of an hour. Hisear, soothed by the grave and cadenced numbers of the Latin Muse, wasdeaf to the women's scolding about the monstrous prices of bread andsugar and coffee, candles and soap. In this calm and unruffled mood hereached the threshold of the bakehouse. Behind him, Evariste Gamelincould see over his head the gilt cornsheaf surmounting the iron gratingthat filled the fanlight over the door.

  When his turn came to enter the shop, he found the hampers and lockersalready emptied; the baker handed him the only scrap of bread left,which did not weigh two pounds. Evariste paid his money, and the gatewas slammed on his heels, for fear of a riot and the people carrying theplace by storm.

  But there was no need to fear; these poor folks, trained to obediencealike by their old-time oppressors and by their liberators of to-day,slunk off with drooping heads and dragging feet.

  As he reached the corner of the street, Gamelin caught sight of the_citoyenne_ Dumonteil, seated on a stone post, her nursling in herarms. She sat there quite still; her face was colourless and hertearless eyes seemed to see nothing. The infant was sucking her fingervoraciously. Gamelin stood a while in front of her, abashed anduncertain what to do. She did not appear to see him.

  He stammered something, then pulled out his pocket-knife, a clasp-knifewith a horn handle, cut his loaf in two and laid half on the youngmother's knee. She looked up at him in wonder; but he had already turnedthe corner of the street.

  On reaching home, Evariste found his mother sitting at the windowdarning stockings. With a light laugh he put his half of the bread inher hand.

  "You must forgive me, mother dear; I was tired out with standing aboutand exhausted by the heat, and out in the street there as I trudgedhome, mouthful by mouthful I have gobbled up half of our allowance.There's barely your share left,"--and as he spoke, he made a pretence ofshaking the crumbs off his jacket.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [1] _Chambre Ardente_,--under the ancien regime, a tribunal charged withthe investigation of heinous crimes and having power to burn those foundguilty.